The Last Storyteller (42 page)

“We’re not all as fluent as you,” he said, and who could say whether he meant it kindly. I braced myself; the “foreigner’s tongue” would embitter the official’s delivery.

“We at the Commission have been concerned for some time now about the sporadic nature of your work. Reports come in at irregular intervals. Your monthly administration sheets do not arrive on time—as of today, you are four months behind. An impression has grown that you have allowed factors in your private life to interfere with the pace and method of your collecting work.”

I began to speak: “There are things I can say—”

He held up a hand. “You will be given an opportunity to defend yourself. If you can.”

The other man, whom I only knew by sight, and with whom I had never conversed, took over. A thin fellow with dandruff, he spoke in a voice with a creaky edge.

“I’m going to make it much more personal. It never seemed to me that you were right for this job. You’re not one of the people. You’re pompous and arrogant, and you have a decided air of self-interest. There’s no humility in you that I can see, and so how in the name of God can you understand the ordinary people of our country? You give the impression that you’re above us all, that only your own private concerns are important, that only you matter.”

Wet Lips cut in: “And you go about the place as though you were
thinking important thoughts. One colleague here described you as lofty and moping, interested only in yourself, and that’s not the humble spirit we look for in our collectors.”

Dandruff came back: “I can’t think what kind of training you got from the late Mr. Clare.” He dragged the word: “Miss-ter.”

Aha. So this is the picture. James is dead. He had no time for these uninspiring officials. “Petty clerks,” he called them. This is their payback. They’ll now knife all of us who loved him
.

Wet Lips confirmed it for me: “Clare never counted as a serious collector, in my book. Too self-indulgent. As for his morals—” He let the sentence hang, as though to finish it would put too great and awful a strain on his soul. What was it that Marian had said?
Ben, look at us, look at the two of us in this country that pretends hour by hour, day by day, not to be corrupt and it’s a cesspool of violence and hypocrisy …

I had nothing to say. Nor had the director.

Wet Lips said, “Any money owing to you will, of course, be paid. I believe that you are due some annual leave. As soon as you bring your administration sheets up to date, the commission will tie up the loose ends.”

It gives me some satisfaction that he never became director. Indeed, he left the Commission the following year, took a job in his brother-in-law’s company, and made a whole new slew of lives miserable.

Ineluctably, I met Marian again. Was it bound to happen, given that I had been recalling her “cesspool” speech? Can you see how James’s idea of the universe and its gifts and its synchronicities had rubbed off on me?

She gasped when she saw the huge bouquet of flowers Mother had given me for Miss Fay. We left the nursing home together, and I drove her home.

How many hours did we talk? At last I went to bed in her guest room. We didn’t even discuss whether we’d share a bed; no need. That was over,
and anyway I was now, in my own terms, unclean, unfit to be loved. Even for a night.

Obviously, I can’t reproduce the entire conversation, but I can give you—because I noted them down—the three major points to emerge from our talk. The best parliamentarians will tell you never to make more than two points in a speech, no matter what its length. To recall three makes me feel privileged.

First of all, she quizzed me about the death of Gentleman Jack. “I know he was a bad lot, but was he a spy?”

“Who can say?” was my answer—but it didn’t shrug her off.

“When I saw it in the newspapers,” she said, “you were my first thought. I wouldn’t have blamed you if you had killed him.”

“I certainly didn’t like him.”

“And I said to myself, ‘Ben didn’t want to soil his own hands with that vandal’s blood, so he got his republican friends to do an assassination. And covered it up with the history of what Collins’s men did when they shot English spies.’ See how clever I think you are?”

I kept it light. “And if I had?”

Marian said, “I’d have told nobody. See why I told you my secret? Incest is the biggest taboo we have. I’d never be able to show my face in this country again. So if I told you my secret, you could tell me anything. And you’ve never had someone like that in your life.”

I nodded. Didn’t say anything. And wouldn’t. For two reasons: I didn’t want to burden her with my guilt; and I didn’t trust life enough, because it contained such things as liquor and, perhaps in her future somewhere, pillow talk. There truly is no such thing as a secret.

As our second item, obviously we discussed Venetia. Here, I gained freedom; Marian released me. When I think of Jimmy Bermingham calling her “Dirty Marian,” I fume; she was so above reproach.

“Isn’t it clear where Venetia has gone?” she said. Not giving my surprise time to mature, she continued: “She’s gone into herself. She may not even know Jack Stirling is dead. And she may not care.”

“You don’t think he killed her?”

“It crossed my mind—but she’s alive. My bones tell me.”

“What should I do?”

“Leave it. She’s gone, Ben. Far away. I saw it in her eyes. And it’s a long way off in there. Move on.”

I shook my head. “Is there anything left in me for her? Don’t know. Can’t look. Or can’t see—which is it? I’d like to get close to the twins.”

“They’re wonderful,” she said. “So open. And those terrific teeth. And they could be a pathway for you. Maybe Venetia had enough force left in her to forge a life away from everyone. But she won’t live without them.” Marian stretched her long legs and fetched whiskey.

And so we came to our third point—which made sense, though in that state of mind I’d never have thought of it myself. It happened in one short sentence. From Marian.

“You need to buy a house, Ben. Your own home.”

In essence, I needed more than that: I needed care of myself; I needed belief. In the telling of my own story to myself I looked back and examined where I had been in the worst of times. And what I had learned. From that blurred picture, the road gleamed brightest, the road around Ireland—as much an idea as a fact. It shone as a ribbon winding through my disheveled life. Which meant that it still exercised remarkable power over me.

And the power went deeper than I had understood. The road had given me much more than I had realized. In my years as a silent workman on a farm, and then when all those random farmers had given me jobs, I had acquired all manner of useful knowledge. When I took Marian Killeen’s advice to the letter, I had the practical skills to do whatever was needed.

On this hill, where I sit now, writing my testament for my children, I found my house. The word “dilapidated” would have praised it. An absent inheritor had neglected it, and for years it had sat, unknown, a hundred yards from the road, behind a high, crumbling wall. Weeds grew head-high, and the tentacles of brambles smothered its windows. Ancient but powerful rosebushes obscured the front door.

I saw it from above, from the hill, and even though it looked about to
expire, something about it caught my heart—the vulnerable and brave chimney, perhaps, above all the rampant growth, not to mention the view if somebody would only cut back the garden.

The legatee lived in London; he had no interest in the place. It took three weeks to get the contract done. On the day I received the key I went to work—seven solid hours of getting rusty hinges free, the gates moving again, the plumbing fixed. For a week I scarcely went into the house; I cleared the garden, chopped down tall weeds, released old and lovely shrubs, including a wisteria that must have been there for a hundred years. Then I found the gravel path that ran all around the house and freed a gazebo from years of savage ivy. Dawn to dark I worked, arriving with flasks of tea and slabs of sandwiches, made in Miss Fay’s kitchen.

My skills returned. All day, every day, I hammered, hacked, chopped, and cut. I painted, I papered, I routed, I repaired. What the original advertisement had called “a good villa, Victorian brick, merchant class” began to reappear. As the house recovered, so would my soul. Or so I hoped.

One morning, as I struggled with the leaden flashing on one of the chimneys, I heard a car engine. Nobody came up that road, except to look at the view. The sea gleamed, and the bay’s horseshoe shone like beaten silver, but sightseeing cars move slowly, stopping here and there, seeking a better vantage. This driver knew where he was headed.

The car turned in at the gateway, blocking mine. Indeed, it nudged the rear bumper.
Well, that’s aggressive
. Four men climbed out, in suits. They looked up, and I had to shade my eyes against the sun to see them. No formalities; no courtesies.

“Come down here.”

At the foot of the ladder they grabbed me. Bundled me into the car. Said not a word. Backed out. Drove down the hill.

“I haven’t locked my door.”

Not a word.

“Where are we going?”

Not a word.

“Who the hell are you?”

Not a word.

I sat in the middle of the back seat, wedged between the two largest. Never saw them before. Any of them. We didn’t head into the city. By back roads, and a lane or two, we went across the hills south of Dublin. Nobody spoke.

I tried to judge their intention from the road signs. Brittas didn’t help; and what were we doing in Ballymore-Eustace?

Half an hour later, I knew. As his response to the outbreak of violence—the IRA called it Operation Harvest; the country called it the Border Trouble—Mr. de Valera, now the leader of the government, had opened an internment camp that became known as Tintown, a collection of steel huts behind barbed wire in the lovely Curragh of Kildare, a wide open plain famous for ballads and racehorses.

We drove through the gate of Tintown, swung open by a soldier. Just inside, the car stopped and all four men climbed out. I stayed where I was, until a hand reached in, grabbed me by the hair, and began to haul. One of the other men said, “Stop, stop, don’t do that—you know what we were told.”

The hair puller let go. I stood in the sunshine alone, while they huddled and whispered. Two of them led me to a long, low building; a third followed; the driver stayed by the car, smoking a cigarette. Inside, we walked down a long, wooden, paint-peeling corridor to a green door. My escorts opened the door and led me in. Inside sat two men, more disheveled than me, and I still wore my roofing dungarees.

“Here’s your pal,” one of the suited men said to the shabby pair. Neither man answered. Not sullen. Not withdrawn. Just—didn’t answer.

“You know these two fellas,” said one of my escorts. A statement, not a question.

“No. I don’t.”

But I did.

“They know you.”

“I can’t speak for them.”

“How much did he pay you, lads, eh?”

Neither of the lakeside men spoke. They looked without feeling at my captors. Never said a word. It would have unnerved me had I been trying to get information. Nor did they look at me. Which I thought an error.

They corrected it, though, because one of the men in the suits said to them, “I notice you’re not looking at him. Are you afraid you’ll give yourself away?”

Both of the lakeside men now swung their heads and looked at me. And I at them. None of us was going to squeal. And we each knew it.

The captors had none of the modern techniques. No room from which they could spy on us, no two-way mirror. This was 1957. No eavesdropping microphones, no lie detectors, no truth drugs, nothing. Nothing but suspicion and psychology. Their suspicion drove them; but their psychology failed them. As though we had worked it out between us, the lakeside men and I drifted into a tactic. I answered every question; they answered none.

“So when did you first meet?”

“Who?”

“You and your two pals here.”

“I don’t know these men. I told you that.”

“How did he bring you the money, fellas? In a brown paper bag? Or did he give you a leather wallet each? A souvenir?”

The lakeside men didn’t answer. I looked at them when they weren’t looking at me. Younger than I had thought—each below twenty-five. Fresh faces, too, an innocence. How could that be? I had seen what they’d done.

You can guess, though, the big questions that coursed through my head: How did this leak out? Who talked?

Both of those lakeside men died a long time ago—one in that Border Campaign, the other in the Troubles, which broke out in the late 1960s and lasted for three decades across Ireland and Britain. Years later I discovered how my involvement came under scrutiny.

They’d had a jealous platoon leader; he believed they hadn’t handed over to the movement all the money I’d paid them, that they’d skimmed some. He tipped off the police. No evidence. My bank account didn’t help them, because I kept most of James’s bequest as cash. Nothing connected us.

Thus, the captors had no idea what to do next. As an interrogation, it grew even more pathetic, and it didn’t even have the delight of farce. At one stage I expected them to say, “Well, if you don’t know each other, you don’t know each other.”

A moment came when they began to flail about. We three “prisoners” stayed as we were. Doing nothing and saying less. The captors went into a corner and whispered. When they emerged they said to me, “Right. Come on.”

Back along the shaky wooden corridor. Into the car. Away. They dropped me out in the country, a few miles from Tintown. Without a word. It took me most of the day to get home. A van here, a silent motorist there, and eventually a long, long walk because I had no money in my pockets.

The house welcomed me. Nobody had taken advantage of the unlocked doors, my car, or the tools left out in the open air.

My mood surprised me; I had stayed calm. Fury hadn’t come along to help. Nor did relief that I hadn’t been charged. But I’m not surprised; you see, by now I had no rights, in my own estimation. And yet—and yet: some kind of obstinacy, some stubborn form of self-preservation kept me from admitting my guilt.